Energy and motion
When you’re in need of something fresh that properly adjusts your heads after a long week, Wilson Springs is it. Back in March, I had an opportunity to hear them play at the Pour House. Their new album, Old thoughts & Memories was on the cusp of being released. The setlist and sound pulled the drapes back into something I hadn’t heard since the Avett’s. So what’s the deal with Wilson Springs Hotel? Because the show is insane, it’s lively and powerful and there’s so much going on that you have to unpack what you’re hearing. And so I pulled frontman Jacob Ridder aside after the show. Here’s what he had to say.
RML: So how does songwriting occur for you?
Jacob: Well, it’s usually very admitting; it's admittance to myself. That’s the biggest part of my lyrics that I like to go with. I go in circles in my brain about feelings or emotions, mostly about a serious relationship that ended due to the COVID situation, and losing a place to live in Montreal, Canada and having that all like stripped. The relationship ended with the “I'm going to see in a month and then never again.” Sometimes it comes from moving from Pennsylvania to Virginia. That was a big part of my childhood. But I think my biggest thing about songwriting boils down to the things that I have trouble saying to myself the most are what become my best songs.The hardest thing to admit to myself becomes the key words in my music. I tried to find all those places in my life. But it’s constant inner work and digging I guess.
RML: What would you say is your proudest accomplishment is on this new album?
Jacob: There's a song called “Is there time”, it's mixed with an old “war-time” fiddle tune. We chose it because it mixed with the longing for somebody else and wondering if you're ever going to make it back to that person. Which is the same feeling of longing for home, however in this case, home is a person. [Incidentally] The album as a whole is a lot about time, and I’m just proud that we’ve captured an essence of our actual life. It's not just a batch of songs that we put together on record. It's touching on how we lived the last two years, the ebbs and flows of financial COVID stuff and figuring out the time and like what we're doing and being a young band and traveling, but also at the same time, all of this is occurring because of a breakup and that I didn't get to love somebody the way I wanted to. Yeah, and you're still fighting for it. And so like the story is still going on in a way Yeah, no, and I'm still talking to that person sometimes and it's never ending you know, it's like talk to him through songs come out or like you think about him and like another thing comes out or it's like, you know that that's been like my main writing thing has been this this like life that I lived and I'm still like wondering about because it never really came to a full completion. And I got a group of guys around me that lives the story with me through the music and through the songs and they are there to listen to what it's about and understand. And I'm just proud that we're living out what we're talking about and we're living our songs and we're trying to just touch as many people with that you know?
RML: So homebase is Richmond, and as you said it’s currently where y’all return after short stints on the road, what does this tour look like both on and off the road?
Jacob: It's a weekend situation a lot of times right now, and it's out and back, out and back, and we are doing other jobs and playing solo gigs. We’re selling vintage clothes, you know? All these facets of our lives are creating whatever the hell we're even doing right now. The time on the road has had ebbs and flows of being very, very hard, obviously. But then it's the most beautiful thing. This is a clean group of guys–we’re very lucky. The focus is there and as five guys in their twenties, the emotional capacity that everyone holds is much deeper than I know in a lot of grown adults. And so sometimes we sit and we do cry together and we talk. Some days I do think about that person [ex] and I don't want to relive the songs. Because when we play new songs, tears happen on stage and it's there. You see the Head & the Heart, or the Avetts and they’re crying on stage. The first time I saw the Head & the Heart I was a teenager, and they were crying over "rivers and roads", on stage. It's touching. We are doing this because we are humans. I always say that we need to add as much "humanness" as possible to everything that we do.
RML: What’s the goal for the future?
Jacob: We want to push man, we want to make it, we want people to know who we are. We want to come back here next time and have that crowd plus. We want to make it to those venues that we all know of, and hit it and hit it and just earn ours. I want to get out there and put records out that mean something to people. And the moment that stops I’m going to do something different.
5/2/2023
By Matthew Busch